life

At the KidZania labour-themed fun park in Singapore, children earn pretend money working pretend jobs as insurance agents or pharmacists, while their parents stand in depressingly familiar queues.

In north-eastern Spain, an ancient tradition combines daredevil skill with strength and teamwork – all amid a festival atmosphere. But just viewing these human castles in the air is not for the faint-hearted.

The Ponte City apartment tower in Johannesburg was built for high-flyers before becoming a violent slum ruled by gangsters. Its rebirth as respectable, affordable housing is a model of community renewal.

A city once divided, today’s Berlin has transformed itself into a ‘poor but cool’ haven for like-minded defectors from around the globe.

The windswept Shetland Islands harbour a culture equal parts Norse and Scottish, leaving English-speaking visitors feeling always on the edge of something familiar.

Three tiny villages on Italy’s Lake Garda have a World War II connection that has curiously contributed to the preservation of their traditions and peaceful character.

Where once poachers hunted animals in the jungles of Koh Kong, Cambodia, ecotourism has offered the legal, if gruelling, option of working as trek guides.

On the road between gigs in Serbia, Hugo Race can recall the optimism in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall fell as more recent history comes darkly to bear.

Looking into the eyes of humpback whales in the seas off Tonga can make a visitor feel omnipotent and inconsequential all at once.